League Admins: League essential features

very big +1

 

"driver swaps, reversed grids, mulitple race sessions"

All these are already implemented and working...

 

Yup i know somethings i mentioned are there. Whole package needed, not half, having only just starting working with rf2 i am still catching up on what is available, any known bugs with the three above???

 

With regard to multiple race sessions, perhaps a better request would be for more control over multiple race sessions, or at minimum better documentation. I have tried setting it up but could not get it to work as recommended in the INI [dedicated simply restarted entire weekend]. What I think most admins would like to see [myself included] is the ability to pre-adjust the server for a multi-race weekend. Most I think are running a Sprint/Feature tyoe weekend where the race lengths are different. changing this on-the-fly [via commandline] is currently possible but honestly a PITA. Not sure that I've seen reverse grid capability without manual intervention or a third party program, but if you're going to truly say you support a multi-race weekend format, this should not require such manual intervention.

On to other subject: weather. I realize we're still in BETA and documentation is lacking, but I'd like to get a better understanding of the relationship of weather profiles is handled. Is it stored as part of a track? A mod? or saved from what ever was run last? [all these refer to dedicated server mode BTW]. Wisk list - would be great to be able to SAVE a weather script that could be quickly applied when setting up te dedicated server. We have started doing some experimenting with weather racing in our league for the first time, I do most of that testing offline first. When I find the right 'combo' it would be great if that weather script could be saved so to apply it to the dedicated server. Just a thought.

One more for the wish list if I may... again dedicated server GUI related. Currently, in order to adjust local track times for praccy and qually, you need to go back to the multiplayer.ini and set manually. It would be very nice to have this option in the dedicated GUI ! too many servers run the default "1pm" for everything, some of these tracks are absolutely spectacular if only folks would run them at different times of the day, including praccy and Q. I love setting up a weekend where Praccy is early AM and race time is late afternoon, the track takes on a completely different feel.

Okay, now I'm REALLY going to go wild with a suggestion...
Why not a 'Weekend profile' file format that could be saved/exported? If you aren't interested in dedicating the resources to enhance the dedicated server GUI, why not create the ability to setup a normal offline weekend as you normally would, but add the option to SAVE a profile of that weekend that could be simply uploaded to the dedicated server? This way you're not having to keep growing the dedicated GUI but you're giving admins the ability to take advantage of all the GUI work already done in the normal EXE. [just remember to add multiple-races!]. JMHO

Ask for suggestions and ye shall recieve!

 

Just wanted to elaborate on this thought and why it was so useful in administering a league.

For a typical season [we run a FALL and SPRING season] we have been running two seperate series on alternating weekends. In the offseason we run individual "special" races, exploring new mods or just having fun.

For each seperate series we created 3 profiles; Practice, Club and finally Race. What this allowed us to do was pre-program the Windows scheduler to automatically fire up a profile on specific days of the week, and in doing so we could program an antire season in advance:

Series A - week one: fire up the Series A Club profile on Thursdays and Saturdays at specific times, run the Series A Practice profile in between and finally fire up the official Series A Race profile on Sunday for the actual event

Series B - week two: repeat the same but with profiles specific to "Series B" .

Once this is set in the scheduler the only requirement [typically on Sunday night after the race] is to quickly setup the 3 profiles for the series that just ended that day for the next event. This done, there was almost no need to touch the server for the entire season, or to worry that an admin might be 'late' for one of the Club or Race events.

But more importantly, one of the important reasons why we used different profiles is because each one has different options associated with it. For example, to encourage public participation [and hopefully membership interest] the Practice profiles were designed to be open access [non-passworded], less stringent [lower damage levels/allow slight mismatching, etc] and geared for short 'races' and longer practice sessions. For CLUB days, the profiles were still open access, but a bit more stringent rules wise but designed to be more difficult as a lead in to the Sunday event. Finally, the RACE profile was exactly as it sounds - Password restricted, full damage levels, long race, etc, etc.

Again, in terms of tools to allow for efficient league adminnistration, these were all features that are dearly missed with their ommision from rF2. It's not necessarily that the same exact method needs to be repeated, but the functionality. In my earlier post I suggested that if the full-on EXE file had the ability to export a 'race weekend' profile, It would be very easy to recreate this functionality:

create a weekend and save the profile as "Series A Practice" - load that on the dedicated server and simply schedule Windows Scheduler to fire up that file on Day X, XX:XX GMT.

In fact, if you took that one step further, you could literally create an entire season of profile files for every weekend and effectively eliminate the need to touch the server for months!!!

 

Dumb question I know but how to do reverse grid? Chat command thingy? Also I noticed I am unable to edit grid b/c + and - buttons grayed out. Am I missing something? Is there documentation anywhere I should be reviewing? I am running server on same machine as running rf2 via host button.

 

Use Gridedit Galaga. also contains link to the rf2 discussion:

http://legends-league.com/twfr/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=434&func=fileinfo&id=596

 

cool, denstjiro it works. but should be able to do via server UI also, albeit manually? is this a known bug? also is grid always according to last race by default? what is best way for me to understand the "workflow". for example, say i do qualify 1 then race 1 then i want to due warmup then race 2. how should i do? should i restart weekend then skip sessions to warmup then do gridedit before race session begins? or instead of restarting weekend should i just reset grid and restart race? i guess it makes most sense to expect to restart weekend because after race next session will be beginning of next weekend anyway unless you time in perfectly between race over and weekend restart. anyway to summarize am i correct in presuming this is the the order of the steps?

1. start server
2. weekend begins with practice
3. qualify 1 session begins after practice over
4. warmup 5 minutes
5. race grid based on qualify 1 as expected
6. after race, weekend automatically resets
7. skip to warmup session
8. use grid edit and select r1 xml from log
9. /batch grid.ini
10. race session begins with reversed grid

 

Your sequence is correct. Once you run the batch command, you will see the resulting reordering or drivers in the chat window as confirmation.

 

Was able to test today and works perfectly. Thanks!

 

Thank you very much.

 

There is actually an existing command "/restartwarmup" which will basically accomplish this (if you follow it with a 'next session'). I don't think it will scramble the qualifying order, either.

/Obviously, this should be documented somewhere. In the meantime, spread the word.